Edit: Better link for the barn cats https://iowacapitaldispatch.com/2024/04/17/two-veterinarians... “A colleague of mine, he told me, ‘You know what’s strange? I went to one of my dairies last week, and all their cats were missing. I couldn’t figure it out — the cats usually come to my vet truck,’ ” Petersen recalled. “And then someone called me and said half of his cats had passed away without warning, and so then all the alarm bells start going off in your head.”
With seeing how people behaved during covid (i.e learnt nothing) I wouldn't be surprised to see another pandemic/huge infection. If it has such a high mortality rate, then maybe we will see a slight shift in some people's behaviours, but I still think most won't change.
It’s probably worse than that. Since Covid had relatively low mortality after the first wave, and got so politicized, I think if there were another more dangerous pandemic a lot of people would simply not believe it until they experienced it first hand.
I'm just a layman, but it looks like 33% might actually be the mortality rate. The WHO[1] and CDC[2] both report a case fatality rate over 50%.
From the Wikipedia article Human mortality from H5N1[3]:
> Public health officials in Ontario, Canada argue that the true case-fatality rate could be lower, pointing to studies suggesting it could be 14-33%, and warned that it was unlikely to be as low as the 0.1–0.4% rate that was built into many pandemic plans.
Some barn cats have tested positive for H5N1. All the ones we know of have died. https://bnonews.com/index.php/2024/04/4-more-cats-test-posit... It seems to be hitting them much harder than the cows.
Edit: Better link for the barn cats https://iowacapitaldispatch.com/2024/04/17/two-veterinarians... “A colleague of mine, he told me, ‘You know what’s strange? I went to one of my dairies last week, and all their cats were missing. I couldn’t figure it out — the cats usually come to my vet truck,’ ” Petersen recalled. “And then someone called me and said half of his cats had passed away without warning, and so then all the alarm bells start going off in your head.”
From the Wikipedia article Human mortality from H5N1[3]:
> Public health officials in Ontario, Canada argue that the true case-fatality rate could be lower, pointing to studies suggesting it could be 14-33%, and warned that it was unlikely to be as low as the 0.1–0.4% rate that was built into many pandemic plans.
Scary.
[1]: https://www.who.int/publications/m/item/cumulative-number-of...
[2]: https://www.cdc.gov/flu/avianflu/spotlights/2022-2023/h5n1-t...
[3]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_mortality_from_H5N1
As usual, the mainstream media is making it widespread, not the other way around as you suggested.
Fear is good for business.